This is the blog of David M. Raab, marketing technology consultant and analyst. Mr. Raab is Principal at Raab Associates Inc. The blog is named for the Customer Experience Matrix, a tool to visualize marketing and operational interactions between a company and its customers.

Saturday, November 01, 2014

I’ll be giving a speech in Milwaukee next week on marketing automation myths, and early in the preparation process had the idea of illustrating it with mythical creatures from the films of Ray Harryhausen, the stop-action animation genius whose best known images are probably the skeleton warriors in Jason and the Argonauts (1963).

This led to many pleasant hours scrolling through galleries of
Harryhausen images. I even found an illustration that vaguely matched the theme of each myth.

But
there’s a problem. Every bit of presentation-giving advice, training, and experience I’ve ever had tells me that these illustrations will distract attention from my points rather than reinforcing
them. The responsible adult inside of me knows I have to get rid of
them while the fun-loving child says, Yeah, but they're just so cool.

This blog
post is my compromise: I’ll publish them here, which will make dropping
them from the actual presentation much less painful. **sigh**

So, the illustrated version of my talk goes like this:

Marketing Automation Myth Busting: we start with Mighty Joe Young, Harryhausen’s 1949 tribute to King Kong. I could tell you he’s
about to smash some myths, but who are we kidding? It’s just a great image.

Trouble in Paradise: marketing
automation is growing quickly but users are dissatisfied. Maybe that’s
not as bad as being attacked by a giant crab, but it’s still
problematic. Image from Mysterious Island (1961).

Myth: All systems are the same. This is an easy mistake
because systems all look and sound alike during the buying process. But in fact they
differ greatly. The myth leads buyers
to think it doesn’t matter which system they purchase, and therefore
that they can buy without first defining their requirements. In fact,
our research shows that unsatisfied marketers often
have purchased a system that didn’t meet their needs. Conversely, the
most satisfied users did select based on specific features. The image
here is Cyclops from The Seventh Voyage of Sinbad (1958).
He has vision problems; it’s hard to see the differences between
marketing automation systems. Get it?

Myth: Integration is easy. This echoes the
first: all marketing automation products integrate with CRM, so people
assume they don’t have to look into the details. But products differ
hugely in which systems they connect with, what data they import
and export, and how much control uses have over the details.
Integration is the single most commonly cited obstacle to success and is
linked to the most dissatisfied users. So people really need to
ensure that the system they’re buying meets their integration
needs. Kali from The Golden Voyage of Sinbad (1974) coordinates
fighting with six arms, so she is the goddess of successful integration.

Myth: Failure is the user's fault, not the system's. This myth follows from the first two: if all systems are the same, then
failure must be fault of the user. But, as we’ve seen, systems aren’t the
same and many failures result from a system that doesn’t meet the user’s
needs. Other research shows that users generally overcome obstacles
they can control, like organization, training, and staffing levels. Of
course, system selection is itself done by users, so they do have some
responsibility for any problems. Talos, an animated statue from Jason
and the Argonauts, ultimately fails to protect the tomb he is built to guard,
so he represents a system that doesn’t work.

Myth: New users should crawl, walk, run. Many experts – myself included – have suggested that new
marketing automation users can safely start without planning by just duplicating their existing programs like email blasts, and then add more sophisticated uses over time. But our research found that marketers who used
more features from the start were happier. My interpretation is that
successful marketers took the time to plan and train before deployment, while marketers who didn’t prepare in advance never found
the time to learn what they needed. It’s possible to overstate
this position – even successful users will add some new features over time. But
the point about preparation is important. Kraken, from Clash
of the Titans (1981), is a sea monster with no legs, so he never had a chance to move beyond crawling.

Myth: Bigger companies do better. You might expect that bigger companies would do a better job with
marketing automation because they have larger and more sophisticated
staffs. They do in fact select more wisely, paying more attention to
features and integration than marketers from smaller companies, and less
to cost and apparent ease of learning. But they also face more
non-technical obstacles such as training, staffing, and organizational
barriers. So their over-all satisfaction level is no higher than
smaller firms. I chose the giant octopus from It Came from Beneath the
Sea (1955) because it’s big – no deeper meaning is intended.

Myth: Marketing automation creates prospects and saves money. Marketers who expect their system to generate more prospects with less effort are usually disappointed.
Marketing automation is basically about nurturing existing leads, not
finding new ones, and most companies add staff and budget. Medusa, from Clash of the Titans, is the boss you
don’t want to give bad news about system results: her dirty look will
turn you to stone.

Myth: Marketing automation has stopped evolving. Commoditization and consolidation may make marketing automation look like a mature industry. But there's still plenty of change: new
vendors entering the space, existing vendors being bought and
repositioning themselves, and expanding scope to
include consumer marketing, display ads, external data, better
databases, identity resolution across channels, mobile
apps and formats, advanced attribution, social promotions and new types of
content. The Beast from
20,000 Fathoms (1953) is a dinosaur who hasn’t evolved one bit.

So what? That’s the end of the myths, but we need to leave on a positive note. So I end the presentation with some sound, if predictable, advice to
prepare carefully, define and select against actual requirements, test
integration in advance, deploy quickly, and expect the unexpected. The
puzzled look on Troglodyte’s face, from Sinbad and the Eye of the
Tiger (1977), represents the confusion marketers feel when wondering what to do next..

Marketers who want help selecting a system could try blowing on a ram's horn like Calibos from Clash of the Titans. Or they can just send me an email at draab@raabassociates.com.

From someone who was in the MA space for many years I enjoyed reading this. I also suggested the crawl, walk, run approach but I defined it differently as we suggeted basic automation to start and iterate on top of that.

Thanks Chad. I agree that the "crawl, walk, run" point is easily misconstrued. People do need to phase their deployment and start with the basics. I think where people get in trouble is if they just duplicate existing "batch and blast" email and expect to eventually add more advanced features without planning in advance.

Hi David,I think there is another elephant in the room. Many "marketers" and those to whom they report have yet to recognise the value that can be dug out of the explosion of available marketing related data. Marketing is still widely seen as a "creative" exercise, and a "black art". Many number phobic marketers are not in the slightest bit interested in removing that cloak of non accountability that still exists, despite the huge changes that have already occurred, and are still accelerating.